


Stories Etched To Skin

by JustAnotherGhostwriter



Series: NaNo Meets Whumptober [5]
Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Bad Things Happen Bingo, Bad Things Happen Bingo Prompt: Burns, Burns, Gen, Obligatory rogue alchemist who is only a plot device, Scars, Whumptober Prompt: Scars
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-16
Updated: 2019-11-16
Packaged: 2021-01-31 18:34:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,570
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21450811
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JustAnotherGhostwriter/pseuds/JustAnotherGhostwriter
Summary: Riza and Ed are stuck in a small cave in, each with a pressing medical situation the other has to help them see to. In the dark, both read more about each other by touching fingertips to old scars.
Relationships: Edward Elric & Riza Hawkeye
Series: NaNo Meets Whumptober [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1533689
Comments: 18
Kudos: 201





	Stories Etched To Skin

**Author's Note:**

> AKA: a shameless excuse to have more Riza and Ed bonding. I'm as much of a sucker for Parental/Uncle Roy and Ed as the next gal, but there's just something so absolutely fascinating to me about Ed and Riza. Possibly because of how different they are. Possibly because Ed and her share fathers who were great scientists and not very good dads. In any case, I've been looking for an excuse to write a plotless bonding between them that lasts longer than the one I have planned for my other WIP. So... here you go! _jazz hands_.

The tunnel walls rumbled ominously as Edward transmuted another stone fist after the fleeing figure. He should _probably _ have been more worried about the structural integrity – or lack thereof – of the darkened infrastructure he was currently in and utilising, but he was _pissed off_, and the lack of Al’s metal clanging behind him was disorientating. Ed had enough time to spare a vicious thought that Colonel Bastard had _better _be taking care of his little brother before Hawkeye yelled at him to keep right and then fired off a volley of shots. To Ed’s admiration, and healthy fear, two of the shots hit, even at the distance, in the relative darkness with both Hawkeye and the man running. It made no difference other than to confirm her superior marksmanship, however; the man didn’t even stumble.

Another deep rumble sounded, this one not connected to anything Ed was doing, although he’d been _thinking _of sending another transmutation the fleeing bastard’s way. More abruptly than made sense, the figure stopped running, coming to an easy dead stop in the middle of the tunnel. Hawkeye faltered, hesitating at the sudden confrontation, but Ed sped up, fury and determination and ambition fuelling him. His flesh shin caught the metal tripwire, making him feel it as it gave way.

Swearing, he spun mid-run to scream back at the lieutenant. “Hawkeye, get back! Get back _now_!”

A deep groan sounded, like a bull bellow magnified and set into stone, and hard debris began to rain down on Ed. He clapped instinctively, but the transmutation was never allowed to take place as he was thrown off his feet, his arms flung wide and open by the force. For a while, there was only confusion and pain and then darkness. An undetermined amount of time later – he’d either passed out or zoned out, not that he’d ever admit to either – Edward came back to himself, hacking up a lung as the dust coated the air in a thick cloud. When he could breathe again, he took stock of his body as much as he could in the dark, careful not to move too much in case he worsened a situation he could not properly see. It seemed that he was lucky – he was bruised and sore in various degrees at almost every conceivable part of his body, but nothing seemed broken.

Cautiously trying to move proved largely futile; his automail arm, while one of the only parts of him _not _ smarting in pain, was pinned underneath something. Or _to _something. He tried to assess the situation by reaching over with his flesh hand, but all he felt was rock and some sort of pipe before the angle became too much for his bruised rib and hip and he had to untwist, coughing all the while as his movement stirred up more dust.

“Edward?” Coughing to mirror his sounded a moment later.

“Lieutenant! Are you okay?” Ed strained toward where Hawkeye’s voice had come from, even though the darkness was absolute.

“Yes. All my injuries are mostly superficial.” She cleared her throat, and sounded much less choked when she spoke again. “Are you hurt?”

“Nah, just banged up. Pinned to a pipe or something, though, so I’m kinda stuck.”

There was the sound of a match being struck somewhere close, and a tiny patch of the darkness illuminated some. He and Hawkeye were separated by large piles of rock, but there was a sound of shifting, and her face appeared over a pile, match stuck between her teeth so she could use both arms to crawl. She spat it out just before it burned to her lips, and the darkness closed back in.

“I’ll need your voice to find you,” she said, the sound of her slow crawling scraping and echoing against the rock.

“Do you carry around matches because of the Colonel?” Ed sniggered, already delighted by the teasing possibilities.

“He’s not very good in the rain,” Hawkeye said, and Ed could have been imagining the amused lilt to her voice, but he liked to think he’d gotten to know her well enough to not only pick up that it was there, but to deserve it making an appearance for him. “But, no. They were to light the search party lanterns; I forgot to return them to Breda.” The noises of her arrival grew louder until they stopped right beside him, and Ed assumed she’d sat down in the first open space she could find close by. Her breathing was laboured, and he couldn’t help but try to rationalise why she was breathing hard so that the worry would dissipate some. “Shall I try to get you unstuck?”

“Uh... Sure. Then I can transmute us out of here.” There were sounds of her shifting, and then a period of nothing in which Ed assumed she was feeling around his automail arm to assess the situation. Rocks began to crackle and shift, and there was a faint pulling against his shoulder port. He tried to help, but it was difficult without being able to see which direction she was pulling, and it didn’t feel like a single thing was budging, much. And then he heard her gasp in pain. “I think I’m pretty much stuck for now. Damnit.” Ed scowled and huffed in annoyance and embarrassment, and then stilled when Hawkeye once again let out a soft noise of discomfort. “Are you sure you’re okay?” Ed asked, hesitantly.

“Yes...” But her tone was hesitant in a calculating way. Ed forced himself to sit still and wait, running possibilities of getting loose through his head while Hawkeye apparently decided what to tell him. “I landed on the lantern. There are shards of glass in my back, making movement difficult.”

Edward swore before he could stop himself. “Sorry,” he said, sheepishly, _feeling _the displeased glare she was sending his way. “Shouldn’t you...Getting them out will help, right?”

“Yes... But I can’t... reach.” They were both silent. Both knew what the next logical step was, and Ed instinctively knew that when somebody as logical as Hawkeye didn’t go to the next logical step, it was for a reason. There was something tentative in the air; fragile and volatile all at once. And, although Ed wasn’t the best at always reading the subtleties of situations, he _knew _Hawkeye, and _knew _to proceed very gently in this space. So he went back to improbable ideas to get out, and let her sit quietly and think about it. “Would you... be able to pick out the shards one-handed?”

“I... don’t know. I never used to be left-handed,” Ed admitted. “But I can try? Uh... see if you can find something to bend and use as tweezers...”

She quietly felt around until found some metal and bent it in two before handing it to him, their touches awkward and fumbled in the blackness. Ed used them experimentally to pick up things near him on the floor, folding them further against his automail leg until they were bent as well as they could expect in that place. He wished he had a way to sanitise the metal, uncomfortable with putting something that dirty near to an open wound. But as he was about to ask how many more matches she had there was the sound of her turning around so her back was to him, and then whisper of a shirt being removed and all his thoughts zeroed in to the realisation that, in order to pick things out of her back, Hawkeye would have to be bare before him. Hawkeye. Shirtless. He had to force his thoughts away from the image not because it made him curious, like the idea of some of the women he sometimes saw on the street wearing tight or interesting shirts, but because it was _Hawkeye_. And her being anything less than fully clothed around him was... alarming. And _wrong_, in the same way that seeing Granny Pinako in just a towel that one time had been.

“I’m going to light a match so that you can see.” Hawkeye’s voice was as steady as ever. “Unfortunately, this is the last one.”

“I’ll take a good look and then go by memory,” Ed promised, forcing himself to sound more confident than he felt.

Hawkeye hesitated again, long enough that Ed almost told her to forget it; that it was a terrible idea, that she should just sit in pain until they got out, rather than have him mess things up. Then the match lit with a crack that sounded too loud in the dark and quiet, and he _understood_. For precious seconds, he could only stare in a deep swoop of horror, and then he forced himself to look past the burn and the array that he definitely recognised despite its ruined state to find the glass. The shards were mostly large pieces clustered in a small area, but she was bleeding quite freely, and had to have been in more pain than she’d let on. Ed couldn’t help but think, fleetingly, that she was probably very used to being able to handle pain well.

“Right, got it.” He kept his voice steady and as unaffected as he could. Hawkeye waved out the match without a word. “Sorry in advance.”

As professionally as he could, Ed began to pick out the shards of glass. Despite having a good idea of where they were, he still had to feel for their exact location. The first time his fingers hesitantly touched the skin of her back she flinched so hard he withdrew. There was a deep, shaky exhale, and Ed forced himself to touch her again, quietly feeling out the shards as though he couldn’t feel the rough skin of the scar whispering across his fingertips. Some were easier to get out with his fingers alone, and he hoped that she wouldn’t notice the little cuts he gave himself in the process. By the time he was done, his shirt was sticky with both his blood and hers from the number of times he’d wiped his hands there. Running his hand one last time across the expanse of her back, checking for any large pieces he missed, Ed felt the blood smear and thought of fingerpainting as a child. The nausea and sympathy hit like a punch.

“Okay. That’s... all I can do. Uh... Wait! Use my coat as bandages.”

Together, they tugged at it until it ripped free from where it was pinned, slipping it off his other shoulder with relative ease. Ed couldn’t help her with the tearing, so he was forced to sit, leg jittering, as she tore up the coat and then presumably tied the strips around herself. The majority of the nervousness thrumming through him only eased when he heard the sound of her shirt being pulled back on.

“Edward. Thank you.”

He flushed at the deep sincerity of those words; at how heavy they were in the air between them and in his chest as they sank into his heart. He didn’t know which one to say first: welcome, or sorry for getting them into this mess. When he tried to express himself, he ended up jumbling them both together in a tangle. A sudden hand on his head – gentle, steady – startled him enough that he jumped violently.

“If I’d been in front of you, I would have tripped that wire. And then I would have been further in when the tunnel collapsed on us. Without you here, I would have had to sit with those shards in me. It’s not your fault. And I’m grateful.”

“Sure,” Ed agreed, still doubtful, but far too embarrassed to let the conversation continue.

Hawkeye’s hand disappeared, and a moment later settled beside him, quiet and more ready to play the waiting game than he was. Ed tried to keep his mind busy, but the darkness and the quiet and the uncertainty and the inability to move, much, grated on him enough that he fidgeted like a bored toddler, stopping each time he remembered he must be annoying Hawkeye with his actions. If she _was _ frustrated, she never said it, and after a long period of silence Ed wondered if she’d fallen asleep. Or passed out. What if her blood loss was worse than he thought? What if she was _dying _right beside him?

“Hawkeye?”

“Yes?”

“Are you... you’re still okay, right?”

“Yes, Ed. I’m still fine. How are you doing?”

“Same old,” Ed shrugged, trying not to feel embarrassed by his question or very relieved that she seemed to still be doing okay.

A while later, however, his words turned out to be unintentionally false. Gradually, Ed became aware of a strange sensation in his shoulder port, and, with a frown and a wince, he reached across himself to feel at it. He startled when he felt warmth. More frantically, he felt down his arm, finding the metal to be increasingly hotter as his fingers travelled down. He brushed against the pipe he was pinned to and pulled away with a surprised hiss; the pipe was near-boiling temperature.

“What’s wrong, Ed?” Hawkeye demanded at once.

“Uh... I’m... I’m pinned against a pipe. It’s heating up, and my arm is against it and... I really have to get free. Soon.”

He didn’t have to explain to her that being attached to a hot piece of metal was not a good idea. With a noise of alarm, Hawkeye moved from beside him and shuffled quickly to his other side to once again try to unpin his arm. Their movements were more determined and frantic, this time around, but she was no less injured, the darkness was no less complete, Ed was no less firmly pinned and, as time wore on, neither of them could touch the arm, much less the scorching pipe. Ed could feel the skin of his shoulder starting to become uncomfortably warm, and his cut and scraped fingers were already developing blisters in some areas.

“Is there any way to take the arm off?” Hawkeye finally asked, some undercurrent to her usual calm.

“You need a wrench, and I don’t have one. Or any way to transmute it... You’ll... We’ll have have to break the arm.”

Hawkeye moved away for a while and came back with less ease. “I have as big of a rock as I can find and lift,” she explained. “I... where’s the best place to hit?”

Ed told her, tightly, and then took her hand and guided it to the spot so she could have a better reference. As soon as he pulled away again, Hawkeye began to smash at his arm, pace unrelenting despite her injuries. The one good thing about the still-warming metal was that the heat made it easier to manipulate. Even so, it took an uncomfortably long time, and by the time she’d mostly snapped the arm in two Ed was biting on a bit of his shirt to keep from vocalising the pain.

“I’m very nearly there,” she promised, and Ed took it as his cue to _pull_.

Ripping himself away from one half of his arm hurt in ways he didn’t really know how to express. But instinct to get away from the burning hot pipe was on his side, as were years of feeling automail connect and disconnect. Hawkeye pounded desperately at the bits of metal still joined even as he pulled, and eventually Ed felt himself able to peel away. He thought he may have lost the battle on not crying out, somewhere in the ordeal, but he couldn’t be sure of anything around the haze of pain and adrenalin. He didn’t even _really _feel the hurt in his ribs as he curled into himself, trying to cradle the port and the screaming nerve connections.

The hands on him made him startle, and then grunt in protest as they firmly peeled his fingers away from the port. “Ed, I need to check,” Hawkeye said, firmly. Her fingers were gentle and skilled, but even the lightest ghosting against the flesh around his still-warm shoulder port made him flinch. “It’s already starting to blister,” she murmured, voice tight. “We need to...”

Her fingers slipped further than the port, and froze as they found the metal screws in his back shoulder. For a moment, neither of them moved. And then she let the pathway of her hand continue, checking with touch how far the burn damage went and finding more than she bargained for: more screws, and the many puckered scars from surgery. Ed let her feel without complaint, because she’d let him, and he understood equivalent exchange if nothing else. But also because he knew he wouldn’t get scorn or pity from her for what her fingers discovered; had known that about her even before he’d uncovered the secret she carried seared into her skin. She intimidated him nearly as much as she had the first time he’d properly met her, but... she held so much of his trust, too, and he wasn’t really sure how or when _that _had happened.

“We need to treat your shoulder as soon as possible,” she finished, voice forced even.

“I still can’t do alchemy, but maybe now we can bust out of here? Push back some rocks or something?”

“We’ll have to try,” she agreed, firm and determined. “Let’s move to the back of the cave in and try to work our way out from there.”

“Do you think we’ll be able to –” He broke off abruptly to listen to the new sound echoing faintly. “Hey. Does that sound like armour to you?” He waited for her affirmative and then _bellowed _Al’s name, heedless of how much it hurt his ribs.

“Brother! Brother, are you alright?”

“We need to get his injuries seen to, Alphonse!” Hawkeye betrayed him before he could even take another breath.

“Protect your heads, Lieutenant,” Mustang’s muffled voice said. “We’re coming in.”

Ed forced his protesting body to curl around itself, wrapping his remaining arm around his head. Two arms curled around his tentative grip on himself, and, in mortification, he realised Hawkeye was wrapping herself protectively around him.

“Lieutenant–”

“Hold tight,” she ordered, firmly, and tucked him closer.

There was a deep rumbling, and crashing, and dust that made them both hack, but then there was also light, and Alphonse’s soulfire eyes and strong arms pulling Ed as gently as possible out of the cave-in. Al set Ed down, and Ed tried to stay standing despite how much _everything _hurt, swaying dangerously as he watched Al lift Hawkeye up, too, before setting her down and turning back to Ed in worry.

“Brother!” Al’s hands steadied him. “What–? _Oh_.”

Al’s voice was slightly horrified, and Ed glanced down at his right arm for the first time. His skin looked about as bad as it felt, and he eyed over the forming blisters with grim disdain before taking in the rest of his entirely _wrecked _automail. That made him moan, and Al made a noise of worry at the sound.

“Winry is going to _murder_ me.”

“I’ll tell her it was my fault,” Hawkeye said, limping over holding a water canteen.

She uncorked it, angled Ed slightly and then poured the slightly tepid water over the burns. It hurt enough that Ed’s legs buckled, and Al lowered him gently to the ground. Hawkeye followed, sitting flat instead of haunching, betraying her own hurt and exhaustion. She murmured soft nonsense comforts at Ed as she flushed out the wound, and he kept still and silent for her sake.

“Lieutenant,” Mustang said, and when Ed glanced at him, the Colonel was frowning at the obvious signs of Ed’s coat poking out from under her shirt. “Injury status.”

“Mostly superficial, Sir; nothing a week of rest won’t put right. I did, however, get some glass in my back. Edward pulled it out for me.” Her voice was casual and matter-of-fact, and she didn’t tremble as she continued to see to Ed’s shoulder.

Mustang, however, blanched more heavily than Edward had ever thought possible, his entire body jerking and his expression open and telling for a moment before he was able to wrestle it back into a mask. Ed looked away, knowing in that moment that he would never ask for more than he’d been allowed to see out of necessity. That kind of history was out of bounds to somebody who had not lived it, he knew.

“Can the two of you walk to the car?” Mustang asked when he was composed once more.

Ed and Hawkeye shared a glance, then both of them nodded. She stood first, slowly and stiffly, and then offered him a hand up. There were blisters on her fingers, too, that chafed against his and the cuts from the glass he’d pulled free. He noticed her expression tightening as she saw the lacerations and, purely on instinct, he squeezed her hand. Her gaze flew to his, a little startled, and then she smiled and stepped closer to put her arm around his back in support.

It wasn’t a hug, especially when Al inserted his worried self into the fray to help keep them both on their feet and trudging toward the car. But it felt warm and nice and safe to be tucked into her side, in a way Ed hadn’t felt in a long, long time.


End file.
